Encounters with Alumni from Greater China

Mark Hughes (Trinity, 1979) in Beijing has been a journalist for 30 years. After graduating from Oxford, he worked as a staff member for a variety of news organisations including the BBC, CNN, ITN, The Independent newspaper, Bloomberg and the South China Morning Post. He is currently executive business editor of China Daily and is based in Beijing.Before moving to Beijing I had spent six years living on a smallholding of five acres in rural South Devon, complete with pond and stream. The house was large, with two staircases from the ground floor, a wood-burning stove and a Rayburn cooker/heating system. The surroundings were green in all directions and passers-by were rare. At night I heard a variety of owls calling and foxes barking. During the day it was cows lowing, sheep bleating and ducks squawking.The contrast with Beijing was startling. From the moment I hurried through the vast greenhouse of the Norman Foster-designed international airport and travelled among the serried ranks of high-rise towers, the sheer vastness and sprawl of the city with its near 20 million inhabitants and its traffic congestion left me goggle-eyed. Rarely over the past two years have I gone to bed in silence, without the dull hum of traffic, sirens or honking providing background evidence that my world has changed.Beijing is a vibrant, 24-hour city. Many bars, restaurants and clubs are open 24 hours a day. Many complain in summer it is too hot (40 degrees Celsius is not uncommon) and in winter it is too cold with heavy dumps of snow.It’s a place to which architects have been drawn and allowed to go mad, resulting in a hotchpotch of clashing styles involving plenty of glass and steel. The buildings stand alongside vast expressways and flyovers but, still, bicycle paths remain, now more dominated by silent, speedy electric two-wheelers that shock the unwary pedestrian. You’ll also see horses pulling cartloads of farm produce driven by hoary, weather-beaten farmers who exist in a good year maybe on US$400. Crossing roads is an exercise in extreme caution. Drivers can turn right at red lights, rarely use their indicators, believe in sudden acceleration and dramatic braking and the power of the horn to steer them through the congestion, both pedestrian and vehicular.Alongside the gilded and well-upholstered luxury of seven-star hotels one can find the old, low-rise lifestyles in the few remaining hutong. Here, impossibly large numbers of impoverished Chinese live over-crowded lives. A glimpse behind the curtain of a tobacconist revealed a bunk bed dominating tiny living quarters. Mum and dad slept down below and two children shared the top.Beijing Chinese are not great striders. They amble. They meander. They stop without warning. Negotiating this, as with the traffic, can be tricky. No walk is left unaccompanied by many and varied throat-clearing exercises that vacuum out the deepest recesses of the lung and follow up with a pavement-splatting spit that can scarily ricochet on to well-pressed trousers. Despite this anti-social aspect to their character, the average Beijinger is often keen to help the bewildered foreigner, to the point of offering directions to somewhere even if he or she has no actual idea where it is. I was once sent in four different directions by four people in the space of four minutes, each time waved off with a big smile.Like many big cities, you can eat extremely cheaply or at vast expense. One little place I visit charges less than £1 for a litre of beer and a plate of meat, vegetables and rice. It’s what they call a food court and harks back to the days when Chairman Mao decreed that all citizens should eat with their fellow workers. These can be found in all shopping malls and require the advance acquisition of a pre-paid card. Another, rather more upmarket venue, Yellowstone Restaurant and Bar (Crowne Plaza Park View Wuzhou) charges £30 for a steak and £6 for a beer. It’s great if you fancy a walk through the awe-inspiring Olympic Park and neighbouring forest and, what’s more, it’s just 100 metres from where I live.

Mark Hughes and a friend at the Drum and Bell

Few will get through a stint in Beijing without sampling the local liquor known as baijiu. It is fermented from sorghum, tastes like a chemical waste product and leaves an odour on the consumer that no amount of showering will dissipate. Several varieties are 54 degrees proof and traditionally it is downed in one like a shot to a chorus of “ganbei”, a Mandarin form of “cheers”. Many a Chinese chief executive has fallen down drunk at a business dinner after several ganbeis, to be replaced by tough, veteran female professional drinkers who proceed with celebrations on their bosses’ behalves.

When the high-rises get too claustrophobic, Beijing offers delightful parks. One of my favourites is Ritan, in the Russian district, with its delightful Stone Boat Café beside a pond. Here, Chinese of all ages gather in the evenings for open-air dancing. There is, also, of course, the old low-rise area incorporating the vast, 178-acre Forbidden City, from where 24 emperors ruled the country for more than 500 years. Here you have a choice of three parks: Jingshan, Zhongnanhai and Beihai. Sneak off if you can and visit the rooftop bar The Drum and Bell, between the two eponymous historic towers. Beer rarely refreshes as well as it does when supped from this historic vantage point.

El Nido Bar

Most of Beijing’s bars are concentrated in specific areas. There is the modern San Litun Village (favourite bars: The Den and First Floor) and the delightful Ho Hai, with its many bars and restaurants clustered around a picturesque lake. You can get a good 20-minute back rub here from old folk for £2 if you don’t mind the curious gazes of tourists. But if you want a taste of old Beijing, spend an evening exploring Fangjia Hutong in Dongcheng district, near Lamma Temple, keeping an eye out for the tiny El Nido bar. The owner brews his own absinthe. If you want a really fiery experience, take a sip of the chili version. You won’t manage anymore and you’ll probably regret it.

One can also escape to the Great Wall for a day’s hiking (Wuling Mountain is a lovely spot) or take the high-speed rail link to the bustling port of Tianjin half an hour away for a different cultural and culinary experience.

A random walk through downtown Beijing will introduce you to sellers of illegally copied DVDs at 50 pence each, fake-Rolex watch sellers and, curiously, women selling incredibly cheap socks no doubt given to them in lieu of wages. You might stroll down a road famed for its high-end car showrooms, where one fortunate bunch of salesmen sold more than 180 Rolls Royces in a year. You might pass a beggar with shrivelled legs playing a traditional Chinese instrument. You will certainly notice many McDonald’s, KFCs and Pizza Huts. Coffee shops are everywhere now. But most of all you will pass huge numbers of the rapidly increasing middle classes sporting the latest labels and looking for the next buck. For all the ambling, this is a city on the move and fully aware of its destiny to be the centre of the world’s largest economy before the century is out. It is a place of perpetual reinvention, constant growth, rising prosperity and big ideas. It is a place that keeps me fascinated. Rolling Devon pastures and babbling brooks no longer hold their interest for me. Unlike in rural England, something quite extraordinary is happening here and I enjoy being part of it.

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